1. Field of the invention
The invention concerns a wireless telephone service subscription data user access method, said data essentially comprising the subscription characteristics and the billing data. A wireless telephone service is provided by a network essentially comprising: fixed stations; wireless telephones linked by radio to the fixed stations; and an integrated services digital public switched telephone network. The invention is more particularly concerned with a wireless telephone service provided by an intelligent network to be described later.
2. Description of the Prior Art
It is feasible to rent wireless telephones to short-term users, for example when an automobile is rented at a train station or an airport. Such rentals can be of very short duration, for example 24 hours. This situation is comparable with the renting of a fixed telephone as part of renting an hotel room. In the case of an hotel, the PABX of the hotel includes individual meters controlled by signals supplied by the network so that the amount of telephone charges incurred by a customer is shown in real time. The hotel management can therefore bill this amount when the customer wishes to check out of the hotel. In the case of wireless telephones, calls pass through fixed stations in diverse locations and it is therefore not possible for the renter to use this method to determine the amount of telephone charges incurred by a customer.
One known method of collecting billing data for a wireless telephone service consists in storing in each fixed station call tickets produced by the fixed station in respect of calls passing through it; this method consists in reading this data once each day and transmitting it to a management center. Billing tickets are generated in this center from the call tickets. For a user requiring to know the amount of charges incurred on a subscription, the time delay before billing tickets are available is the sum of the following times:
the time for reading tickets in each fixed station from a management center; PA1 the time for processing all the billing tickets that the subscriber may have generated in all the fixed stations served by a management center, as billing must be comprehensive; PA1 the time for collating all billing tickets from other management centers, in cases where not all the fixed stations of a network are managed by the same management center, so that there is an additional transfer time and an additional processing time; and PA1 the time for the user to access the billing tickets via the sales office of the network operator. PA1 a distribution network comprising fixed stations and wireless digital telephones linked by radio to said fixed stations; PA1 a digital public switched telephone network to which each fixed station is connected; PA1 service control points connected to said public switched telephone network and each telephone service subscription database and a call processing logic device generating a call ticket at the end of each telephone call; PA1 a service management system processing each call ticket to generate a billing ticket and comprising a reference database storing the characteristics of each subscription and all said billing tickets; PA1 setting up a link between said user terminal and a server of said service management system; PA1 authenticating the identity of said user; PA1 reading billing tickets of said subscription in said file under the control of said user terminal, according to the user's access rights; and PA1 processing the information from the read billing tickets. PA1 indicating to said user which data is accessible for reading and which data is accessible for writing, according to the user's access rights; PA1 processing an access request from said user terminal to read or write accessible data; PA1 sending to said terminal a "modification executed" acknowledgement in the case of a write access request which is processed immediately; and PA1 sending to said terminal a processing acknowledgement in the case of a write access request that is processed off-line. PA1 transmitting from said terminal to said service management system a password specific to said user; PA1 reading in said database of said service management system at least one password associated with said subscription; and PA1 verifying that the password transmitted matches a password associated with said subscription. PA1 determining in a smart card connected to said terminal a first signature using a random number and a secret key specific to said user and transmitting said first signature to said service management system; and PA1 in said service management system:
Additionally, the subscription characteristics are not readily accessible to the subscriber. The subscriber who rents a wireless telephone to a customer cannot easily modify the subscription characteristics. For this reason, all valid subscriptions have the same characteristics. In other words, all subscribers have the same rights all the time, except for subscribers whose subscription has been blacklisted. It is not possible to customize the rights of each subscriber, for example to bar access to the international telephone network or to set a ceiling to prevent further use of the telephone when the amount of charges incurred has reached or exceeded the ceiling or to terminate use of the telephone at a predetermined date which is not the date at which the subscription expires.
One object of the invention is to propose a method that can be used in an intelligent network to enable a user to obtain very fast access to the data of a subscription using a standard terminal connected to the public switched telephone network and which makes provision for controlling such access to protect the data.